Various grinding machines for end mills for wood are known in the background art. They are of the static type, fixed to the floor or of the portable type. Among the latter, a grinding machine for wood bits of the same proprietor as the present invention (Italian patent UD2009A000095 dated 15 May 2009 and PCT/1B2010/001134 dated 17 May 2010) is noted. Other machines of the portable type for metal bits are also known: DE 20 2005 005859 U1 (Taiwan More Cash Villager Corp); U.S. 2007/243801 (Liao Ming-Ko-TW); EP 2 006 052 (Taiwan More Cash Villager Corp); U.S. Pat. No. 7,473,163 B1 (Lee Wang-Scheng-TW).
As regards grinding machines of the fixed type for end mills for wood, they have one or more stations into which the mill to be sharpened is to be inserted in order to sharpen the desired cutting edge. These machines are very complex and must be operated by skilled personnel, as otherwise there is the risk of damaging the tool irreparably instead of sharpening it correctly. They are mostly operated manually and therefore the operating personnel must be very expert.
Sometimes these machines, despite being equipped with information technology methods which are known in the field, are of the fixed type and therefore cannot be moved to the various departments or to serve other machine tools; this static nature is considered a negative aspect, is scarcely practical in its use and in any case affects sharpening times and the associated costs.
In order to meet the needs of companies working in the field of wood working by chip forming/removal, in particular in the sharpening of end mills, it has been thought to provide a fully automatic machine for these sharpening operations which has a modest weight, and to make it easily movable by means of an adapted trolley to which it is to be fixed. This avoids the forming, inside factories, of an adapted sharpening department, since the machine in each instance can serve different machines.